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Genome-wide analyses reveal widespread genetic overlap between neurological and psychiatric disorders and a convergence of biological associations related to the brain

Smeland, O. B.; Kutrolli, G.; Bahrami, S.; Fominykh, V.; Parker, N.; Hindley, G.; Rodevand, L.; Jaholkowski, P.; Tesfaye, M.; Parekh, P.; Elvsaashagen, T.; Grotzinger, A. D.; The International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (IMSGC), ; The International Headache Genetics Consortium (IHGC), ; Steen, N. E.; van der Meer, D.; O'Connell, K. S.; Djurovic, S. D.; Dale, A.; Shadrin, A.; Frei, O.; Andreassen, O.

2023-07-23 genetic and genomic medicine
10.1101/2023.07.21.23292993 medRxiv
Show abstract

While neurological and psychiatric disorders have historically been considered to reflect distinct pathogenic entities, recent findings suggest shared pathobiological mechanisms. However, the extent to which these heritable disorders share genetic influences remains unclear. Here, we performed a comprehensive analysis of GWAS data, involving nearly 1 million cases across ten neurological diseases and ten psychiatric disorders, to compare their common genetic risk and biological underpinnings. Using complementary statistical tools, we demonstrate widespread genetic overlap across the disorders, even in the absence of genetic correlations. This indicates that a large set of common variants impact risk of multiple neurological and psychiatric disorders, but with divergent effect sizes. Furthermore, biological interrogation revealed a range of biological processes associated with neurological diseases, while psychiatric disorders consistently implicated neuronal biology. Altogether, the study indicates that neurological and psychiatric disorders share key etiological aspects, which has important implications for disease classification, precision medicine, and clinical practice.

Published in Nature Neuroscience (predicted rank #4) · training set

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